


Errant Knights

by dayinthelife



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:47:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayinthelife/pseuds/dayinthelife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so when the Dragon Queen finally sat atop her throne of blood and bone and ash, Brienne’s name had been amongst those charged with treason. And she had fled like a coward, the man who killed the silver queen’s father running right beside her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The fire is coming, so I think we should run

_It is twilight, and the sunlight wanes as a thick mist rolls in over the wood, slowly shrouding her world in a dense eerie fog. Most of the trees have shed their summer skins and stand like skeletons against the sky with their arms raised toward the gods, whether in adoration or condemnation, she isn’t sure. She hears a rustling ahead and knows that the one she seeks must be just out of sight. She quickens her pace, her heart fluttering with anticipation._

_“That…that is not my lady mother,” stammers the auburn-haired girl, shaking her head as tears fill her eyes. Twigs snap like bones beneath her feet as she begins to back away from the wraith that had once been Catelyn Stark. The dead woman makes a horrible keening sound, a cry of both grief and menace, and her twisted bloodstained hands reach toward Sansa through the gloom. The girl shrieks and trips over a root, falling backward into the mud. “Not my lady mother…” she sobs, shrinking toward the ground as Lady Stoneheart towers above her, taller and more threatening than she ever was in life._

_Brienne rushes toward them, but it feels like she has stepped into a mire of honey and she struggles as tendrils of fog surround her and hold her back. Lady Stoneheart leans over her daughter now, clutching at her fiery hair and bringing their faces together, her lips pulled back in a terrible grin. Sansa whimpers with fear, pleading for the Seven, the Old Gods, her brothers, anyone to save her._

_With effort, Brienne reaches Sansa’s side at last. Her heart is pounding and she fumbles with her scabbard as she unsheathes Oathkeeper, which glows blood red in the dying daylight. It feels like the most difficult thing she has ever done to bring the blade down on her lady (she’s not her lady anymore, she tells herself, Catelyn is dead), and her arms are heavy with the weight of guilt and broken vows, but she will do what she must to protect the girl. With an inhuman howl Lady Stoneheart falls, brown blood quickly soaking the dried leaves beneath her. Sansa clambers to her feet and clutches at Brienne, and Brienne buries her face in the girl’s russet curls and cries._

_“I am sorry, my Lady. I am so sorry…”_

_But a groan interrupts her apologies, and as the fog suddenly clears it becomes apparent that it is not Catelyn Stark’s body lying in a pool of red beneath the weirwoods. The head lulling on the ground is golden, and Jaime Lannister curses as he clutches his stomach, rivers of sticky scarlet coating his hands._

_“I trusted you, wench…” he whispers, a sad smile twitching on his lips even as he winces in pain. “Gods be damned but I trusted you…”_

_“Ser Jaime!” Brienne screams, and she attempts to disentangle herself from Sansa’s arms. But the young girl refuses to let go, her nails digging painfully into Brienne’s back. Brienne looks back at Sansa in a panic, but the girl stares at her calmly, an odd light seeming to emanate from her, growing brighter and warmer with each passing second. Her hair is burning, Brienne realizes, but Sansa seems not to care and still does not release her grip from around Brienne’s waist. She is burning, and Brienne with her._

_“JAIME!”_

_“You betrayed me…”_

_“…I’m sorry.”_

_The flames grow hotter._

 

Brienne wakes suddenly, a sheen of sweat on her brow and her heart beating so wildly she fears it might burst from her chest. She wipes tears from her eyes and draws a few shuddering breaths, hoping to steady the tremors of adrenaline still coursing through her body. _Another dream, then._

They have been plaguing her for months now, the nightmares; guilt clinging to her like a lost child in the night, single minded and relentless in its desperation to make a home within her. Sometimes she finds herself in a wood with Lady Stoneheart, who seeks her out to personally impose a final penance. Sometimes she is being swept away at sea while her father stands on the shore, weeping tears of blood. Sometimes it is Jaime holding the tip of a blade to her neck, calling her worthless, a dishonorable betrayer no man could love. But always the dreams end in fire. 

Running a hand through her hair Brienne stands and makes her way toward the door of the cramped cabin she and Jaime were lucky enough to secure on _The Moonsinger’s Maiden_. The maelstrom of political upheaval in Westeros had caused many to flee for the Free Cities, but even the most hardened seafarers were loath to invite death and desertion onto their ships. It was Jaime’s charm (and coin purse) that won them passage to Braavos, while Brienne stood shy and silent by his side as he wove tales of wealthy relatives and rewards far greater than the few gold dragons in his pocket. 

Before she opens the door to step out onto the deck she glances back at her companion, watching his chest rising and falling steadily as he sleeps, and feels the veil of anxiety that had enveloped her only moments before begin to slip away. He is not whole, and she doubts he is happy, but right now at least he is alive and safe. That is the most she can hope for in these broken times, and each breath gives her comfort.

She feels the piercing bite of winter as she approaches the railings on deck, grasping the cold iron and peering out over the water, watching chunks of ice float stubbornly amidst the dark swells of the Narrow Sea as the wind tugs at her hair. The ship seems to have carried the harsh Westerosi winter with it, and she hopes that Braavos’ climate will be kinder. The smell of the salty air brings her thoughts to Tarth, and Brienne wonders how her father fares, if his food stores will be enough to last what has been said to be the longest winter in a thousand years. She feels a pang of guilt in her heart, as she often does when she imagines her father’s doings, and wonders once again if she had made a mistake in leaving. 

Her father’s only heir, and she had left him alone, perhaps forever, with an empty hall and dying bloodline. She sometimes tells herself that she longs for nothing more than to stand along the sandy shores of Tarth in her father’s embrace, with a husband by her side and a child in her belly; and on dark nights when the loneliness and guilt seem too heavy to bear, she can almost convince herself it is true. But in her heart of hearts she knows she has never been and will never be that woman, that wife, that mother. She was not made by the Mother, to birth and nurture a child, to fill her family’s halls with life and laughter. Instead, the Warrior had forged her, renouncing delicate, comely features and offering instead a capable body: long, sturdy limbs not fit for a maiden’s dress but a knight’s armor, hands better suited for steel than needlework. Her duties lay in protecting life, not creating it, and she had accepted and embraced that fact long ago.

But even if that had not been the case, and she had had a man and a life blooming inside of her and wished for nothing more than to live the rest of her days peacefully on Tarth, she could not return; she would not bring that danger upon her father. She gave up her home the moment she chose to defy Daenerys Targaryen, who had been true to her name and returned to Westeros in a blaze of fire and blood, razing cities and burning everything in her path. It was said that death was the only winner of that war – dragons did not discriminate between lords and peasants, nor children and soldiers. No region had been left unscathed, and those lucky enough to have survived would be haunted by the smell of burning flesh for the rest of their lives. And so when the Dragon Queen finally sat atop her throne of blood and bone and ash, Brienne’s name had been amongst those charged with treason. And she had fled like a coward, the man who killed the silver queen’s father running right beside her.

A strong wind stirs, making Brienne shiver and wish she had worn more than a tunic when she left her bed. She wraps her arms around herself and turns back, startled when she sees Jaime standing in their doorway.

“Thinking of swimming back to Westeros?” he asks with a smirk, and Brienne shakes her head, walking past him and sitting down on her cot. After a moment Jaime closes the door and sits down beside her, his smile replaced by a more concerned expression. _He is beautiful_ , Brienne thinks absurdly, moonlight shining on his golden hair and giving it a ghostly glow; for a moment he looks like he could be the second coming of the Warrior, if the Warrior ever had such haunted eyes.

“Another nightmare?” he asks, though he knows the answer. She isn’t the only one whose ghosts have followed from Westeros, and many a morning she has risen to find him already awake, red-eyed and sulking, looking out toward the water as though he would like nothing more than for the sea to sweep forth and swallow him forever. 

Brienne only sighs in response. 

“Tell me.”

She reluctantly recounts her dream to Jaime, but leaves out his presence, as she always does. It is his turn to sigh and he runs a hand through his hair.

“It isn’t your fault, you know. None of this. Daenerys Targaryen would have come and killed the girl whether you hid her at an inn or in your breeches. Petyr Baelish sealed her fate when he named her Queen in the North, not you. Don’t blame yourself for his folly.” 

Brienne nods, but in her mind she can still see the inn at the crossroads burning and she knows that this isn’t the last time she will wake with Sansa’s screams ringing in her ears. 

“I know,” she says quietly, twisting the fabric of her tunic in her hands. Jaime puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes it.

“There’s only so much one person can do, even one as honorable as you, Brienne. You mustn’t dwell on this forever.” He gives her shoulder another squeeze and stands. “Get some sleep, wench,” he says affectionately. “Things will look less bleak in the daylight.” The reassurance doesn’t quite reach his eyes though, and Brienne finds herself wishing that he could believe his own words. 

She climbs back under her blankets and pulls them to her chest, wanting to believe he is right despite the fact that neither of them put much faith in such hopeful claims anymore.


	2. I kissed your lips and I tasted blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Although her grip on him had loosened, every few nights his twin returned to greet him in his dreams, all smiles and laughter and happiness, so unlike the last time he had seen her, her last moments alive. She held the limp body of the king in her arms, his head lulling on his shoulder, and Jaime’s stomach twisted with a mixture of dread and regret as he approached her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thank you so much to [canyouseemyspark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/canyouseemyspark) for being an amazing beta, and thank you to everyone who left such wonderful comments. :)
> 
> This chapter covers a bit of backstory, but I promise the ball will get rolling in the next chapter...
> 
> As always, feedback is greatly appreciated!

_Her emerald eyes shine as warmly as the sun above as she draws him to her, and the scent of amber and sweat fills his nose as he leans in to kiss her neck, her skin smooth and warm beneath his touch. She sighs and wraps her arms around him, curling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and pressing her body against him. He laughs, leaving a trail of kisses along her jaw and lingering at her mouth. She catches his bottom lip between her teeth for a moment and stares into his eyes, her guileless blue gaze penetrating him to his core (but that isn’t right…something isn’t right). He shivers and she laughs at him before pushing him back into the grass, straddling his hips and letting her hair fall over him as she leans down to kiss him. She is so near that he can feel her heartbeat, and he forgets the strangeness of her look as his world is reduced to a veil of luminous gold._

He is jerked back to reality by a knock on the door, and Cersei fades once more into the shadows of his thoughts, a hazy apparition refusing to be burned away completely by the bleak winter sun.

“Ser Jaime?” Brienne opens the door to their cabin without ceremony while balancing their breakfast on one arm. She carries two bowls of what the cook has taken to calling porridge (although Jaime has eaten more appetizing acorn paste) with stale heels of bread half submerged in the sorry gruel. Before, his stomach might have clenched at the thought of eating such rations, but he feels as though he has lived several lifetimes on this ship and so he merely groans and sits upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand. It is only after he sees the color rising on Brienne’s cheeks that he notices how uncomfortably tight his breeches seem to have become in the night.

“I…I thought you were awake, perhaps I should have waited after I knocked…” Brienne stammers, and Jaime should probably think she’s absurd for being so embarrassed – she has spent more than half of their relationship cleaning up his shit and vomit, his cock shouldn’t cause her to blush – but instead he finds her bashfulness endearing; at least one of them has maintained some shred of innocence through this mess. He fixes her with a smirk and she mumbles that she needs to speak with the captain about their arrival to Braavos, leaving her breakfast untouched on the table next to his.

Only after Brienne’s hasty retreat does he allow the smile to drop from his lips, and he exhales sharply through his nose as he looks down at his body, once again betraying him. Although her grip on him had loosened, every few nights his twin returned to greet him in his dreams, all smiles and laughter and happiness, so unlike the last time he had seen her, her last moments alive.

The day had been overcast, cloudy and grey with the smoke and shadows of dragons, the screams of the dying carried out to sea on the wind. He had broken away from his men and managed to slip inside the throne room.

It was already partially destroyed, its charred roof collapsing beneath a fresh coat of snow, the unblemished white a jarring contrast against the wreckage hidden beneath it. She sat upon the throne, the pale winter sunlight falling from above casting pallid shadows about her face. She held the limp body of the king in her arms, his head lulling on his shoulder, and Jaime’s stomach twisted with a mixture of dread and regret as he approached her.

“What have you done,” he said quietly, his eyes going from Tommen to the glass vial she held in her shaking hand, the greenish black liquid catching the light with every twitch of her wrist.

“What I needed to,” she replied, her voice steady even as she clutched her son’s body to her chest, tears streaming from her swollen red eyes and into his golden curls.

An unusual feeling of resentment bubbled up within him, and he pictured himself by Cersei’s side when Tommen had been born, an ugly pink squalling thing to ignore, not become attached to. He pictured the boy sitting in his chambers with his kittens, laughing and smiling and so unlike the still child before him in his sister’s arms. An unexpected burst of rage overtook him and he grabbed Cersei by the shoulders; in her surprise she let loose her grip of the vial and it fell to the ground, the glass shattered and green black liquid streamed down the base of the throne and over the platform on which it stood. She jerked away from him and shrieked, sinking to the floor and raking her hands through the wet shards of glass. Jaime stepped back, surprised, and she looked back to him, her eyes shining with disbelief.

“Idiot!” she cried, her bloodied hands scrambling for something beside the foot of the throne. She lunged at him suddenly, and Jaime felt a sharp pain beneath his ribs, and then warmth and wetness bloomed; he saw that she held a dagger and finally he understood.

“There are fates worse than death, dear brother, and the Targaryens would see that we know them. We will not give them that satisfaction.” She stepped toward him slowly and placed her hand on his chest, her fingers coming away red. She brushed them on his cheek and as she pressed their foreheads together he could feel her shaking, her breaths harsh and shallow. Her eyes were blazing, glimmering with fear and determination and wildfire, when she thrust the dagger into his good hand.

“If you have ever loved me, Jaime, you will do this.”

A dragon screamed somewhere outside and Jaime felt as if his heart had been pierced with a thousand shards of ice. She would never forgive him if he did not do this, and he could never hope to protect her from the horrors that waited outside the walls of the Keep.

“I will not let you die alone.”

“No. We came into this world together, and we will die together.” She pressed the edge of the dagger into his palm and drew blood.

He ran his wounded hand through her hair and almost laughed as the thought crossed his mind, that his house would perish as it had risen, amidst blood and gold. Even when confronting her death, his sister stood proudly, her lips forming a thin line as her heart drummed against his chest. He stroked her neck with hands of flesh and gold and she shivered, taking his lips in hers for a final time.

“Do it, Jaime, I love you, please just do it. It’s only us, only us now, we’ll die together just as it should be, just as it must be, please just do it now. I love you,” the words streamed from her lips as she clutched at his back, pressing her forehead to his and welcoming her death.

He said a silent prayer to the gods that his hand would be steady, whispered I love you into her hair, and thrust the dagger beneath her ribs into her heart. She collapsed onto him with a sigh and they both fell to the foot of the Irone Throne, him cradling her body as her life flowed out over his hands.

He sat like that for some time, holding her and weeping, until the sun began to set beyond the remains of the stained glass, casting the throne room with a lazy, crimson glow. Another dragon called, loud and terrible, and another and another, and it seemed as though the Keep was surrounded by the beasts. Jaime thought he heard a woman and a man quarreling outside the large marble doors, and his heart leapt. He was a dead man, but there was no reason he couldn’t take the Targaryen girl to one of the seven hells with him.

As he unsheathed his sword he was surprised to see that it was not a silver haired girl that made her way into the hall, but his own former Lord Commander, Ser Barristan Selmy, dressed in snowy white armor as if he had never left. Jaime couldn’t hold back his laughter that time.

“Well, Ser Barristan, it seems I am not the only one who lacks in loyalty. Unless King Joffrey commanded you to join with Aerys’s exiled spawn without my knowing?”

“Your son was no king, _Ser Jaime_ ,” Selmy responded, spitting his name with a disgust Jaime hadn’t thought him capable of in his time with the Kingsguard. Jaime answered by raising his sword. For the first time Selmy noticed he was holding it in his left hand, and it was his turn to sneer as Jaime approached, his blade shaking clumsily in his clenched fist. Jaime knew he would not survive this fight, he didn’t mean to, but he would fight nonetheless, cut deep this man who turned the other cheek as his king committed atrocities beyond imagination, who still dared to call himself honorable despite it all. Jaime had no doubt he would be just as militant in his defense of his silver queen’s horrific actions, and the thought made his stomach turn.

“Fight me, Ser Barristan,” Jaime challenged, swinging at the other man, who blocked his attempt with ease. He kept up his attack until his arm felt numb, but Selmy showed no such signs of fatigue.

“This is foolish, Ser,” he said as he swept Jaime’s feet out from underneath him and he fell heavily to the ground. “It pains me to kill a man of the Kingsguard, but I’m sure you understand why I must.”

Ser Barristan’s sword was pressed into the hollow of his neck when Jaime saw the marble doors open once again, and he expected to see Daenerys Targaryen, the new queen of Westeros come to gloat over the body of her father’s killer. The woman who entered did not have silver tresses though – instead staw colored hair stuck to her forehead, matted with sweat and blood. With a shout Brienne of Tarth attacked Selmy, Oathkeeper singing in her hands. They were evenly matched, but Ser Barristan underestimated Brienne’s endurance, and eventually succumbed to her sword. Jaime felt a twinge of pride along with the pain as Brienne dragged him to his feet, her eyes wild and panicked. She was still not used to killing, he knew, let alone a former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and he could practically see the moral battle raging within her. Jaime’s head felt very light, and his vision began to swim as he wondered vaguely why she had come for him, why she couldn’t have just left him to die, stubborn wench though she was.

“Ser Jaime, we need to leave,” she said, her eyes darting to Cersei and Tommen’s bodies by the throne. “I am sorry, so very sorry, but we need to leave.”

And she had half dragged, half carried him out of the Keep, keeping to the long forgotten alleyways of Flea Bottom to avoid the thick of battle. Jaime never thought to ask her where she found the dappled grey Palfrey that had carried them to Duskendale, where they had boarded _Moonsinger’s Maiden_ and began their journey to Braavos. He had been too preoccupied with death to care. But as hours had turned to days had turned to weeks, the constant stinging in his heart was reduced to a dulled ebb of pain, less biting but more permanent, and Cersei’s ghost now mostly resigned herself to haunting him after the sun had gone down.

Jaime frowns and shakes his head, forcing himself from his own memories and back to the present. The sun is shining through the window in their cabin and gulls shriek out on the sea; it is mid morning at least, and he wonders why Brienne has let him sleep so long. He didn’t think it possible, but he has become fonder of her since her misguided rescue. She has given up so much for him, and Jaime isn’t sure he can say as much for anyone else in his life. And because of this he had decided, one night when the both of them were lying awake on their uncomfortable straw beds, afraid to sleep lest they be dogged by the demons of their guilt, that he would live for her. Brienne of Tarth, the stubborn wench who had refused to let him die, not once but twice; the woman who defied Daenerys Targaryen and left her home so that she might accompany him on a journey with an unknown destination, an unclear end. She believes in him, more than he does himself, and for that he is grateful.  
“Ser Jaime?” Brienne knocks on the door and waits a moment for him to invite her in.

“You needn’t knock, wench,” Jaime calls, and she opens the door, averting her eyes for a moment before looking at him. She seems to be brimming with a nervous energy he hadn’t noticed earlier this morning.

“Jaime, we’ll have to eat quickly. We’ll be at Ragman’s Harbor before midday.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [canyouseemyspark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/canyouseemyspark) for being such a lovely beta!
> 
> Feedback (questions, concrit, etc) is welcome and very much appreciated!


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